Latest Electoral College Forecast Shows Historic 2020 Surge

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A new electoral college analysis from NPR has presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden with a sizable lead over his incumbent competitor, President Donald Trump. According to the analysis, Biden can count on a full 297 electoral votes that are at least leaning Democratic, while Trump can only count on a meager 170 electoral votes that are at least leaning Republican. NPR’s analysis estimates that 71 electoral votes are currently “toss-ups.” The numbers, of course, give Biden a significant advantage — if he were to win every one of the currently leaning Democratic states in November and not a single other one, he’d have more than enough electoral votes to win the presidency.

NPR’s explanation of their latest analysis points to problems for Trump like his failures in responding to the Coronavirus pandemic; these failures, of course, are on clear display for the nation (and even world), since Americans keep getting sick and dying from the virus at high rates while Trump goes golfing and essentially completely refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis. He claims that the country has so many cases because it does so much testing, which is a moronic claim — the virus would still be spreading and killing people whether or not a single test was performed.

NPR reports:

‘It’s hard to believe that the hole President Trump dug for himself could get deeper, but it has. A record and widening majority of Americans disapprove of the job he’s doing when it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic; he gets poor scores on race relations; he’s seen a suburban erosion despite efforts to win over suburban voters with fear; and all that has led to a worsened outlook for Trump against Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential election.’

Thus, the outlet adds, “in the past month and a half, the latest NPR analysis of the Electoral College has several states shifting in Biden’s favor, and he now has a 297-170 advantage over Trump with exactly three months to go until Election Day.” Every single one of the latest six updates to the NPR forecast are in Democrats’ favor. They moved Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Pennsylvania from “toss-up” to “lean Democratic,” and they moved Colorado from “lean Democratic” to “likely Democratic” and Georgia — a traditionally quite red state! — from “lean Republican” to “toss-up.”

NPR’s forecast for the race closely mirrors the latest electoral college forecast from the Cook Political Report, which currently estimates that a full 308 electoral votes are at least “leaning” Democratic while just 187 electoral votes are “leaning” Republican. (They have 43 electoral votes currently rated as toss-ups.)

These forecasts are supported by a consistently great showing for Biden in polls — on the national level, Biden currently leads Trump by an average of 7.4 percent, according to RealClearPolitics, and his lead has not been below 7 percent since June 1 — over two months ago. Biden has sizable polling leads in a number of states that will be important to any eventual victory, like Florida, where he currently leads Trump by an average of 6.2 percent. In one Quinnipiac University poll conducted last month, Biden led by a full 13 percent in the state.